


Connections

by thosefarplaces



Series: Portal AU [2]
Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: F/F, SKIP THE HARD PART, SO, and start with something different, but I had another part I wanted to write and I've been struggling to make it work, this AU was kind of supposed to be done, when in doubt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-16
Updated: 2016-04-16
Packaged: 2018-06-02 13:04:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6567463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thosefarplaces/pseuds/thosefarplaces
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The sequel to Circuitry that decided it needed to happen. Sarah owes a lot to Bitterblue's wonderful fic "This was a triumph" (http://archiveofourown.org/works/1860807), and this whole fic owes a lot to Bitterblue who introduced me to Portal AU in the first place.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Connections

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Bitterblue](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bitterblue/gifts).



She's rounding the corner of the block when there's a roar behind her and a bullet grazes her cheek, and everything slows for a moment as she dives behind the nearest wall to take cover from the turret. Except the nearest wall is a neatly trimmed hedge, and she is crouching in a stranger's front yard, and the bullet, she realizes, hands tightening into fists, is only stray gravel thrown by a motorcycle tearing down the road.

She closes her eyes and breathes in the smell of newly cut leaves and tries not to put her head in her hands. Tries to pretend to no one in particular that her hands aren't shaking. _Bloody hell._

Half the time this world doesn't feel real. She thought freedom would feel...different, somehow. Lighter. She doesn't regret it, not exactly, but she is scared. Not of dying in a lab buried deep beneath the earth, but of losing her grip on things. Of drifting sideways into someplace that's neither this new world nor the old one. She remembers the drawings she found, in cramped alcoves that Cos couldn't quite fit into, the stick figures and the frantic, almost fervent writing.

She never found the author. She doesn't want to become her.

The address on the piece of paper in her pocket has given her something to hold onto. A goal to steer towards. Today, some two months after she crawled blinking and blinded out of Dyad's wreckage, she's finally made it to the address's street. As her pulse slows to normal and her fists begin to unclench, she looks up at the two story house whose yard she is standing and feeling increasingly embarrassed in. The number over the porch reads 108.

Hah. Of course it does.

In the early days of her newfound freedom, when too much sky made her nauseous, she spent a lot of time in her room. She'd used it to do some digging. She has more of a feeling than a memory that in her old life – the oldest one, before Dyad, which sometimes is impossible to believe – she was good at this. Finding things out about people. It's hard to find any records at all, since most of them are either sealed or destroyed. But between Google and a lot of imaginative connecting of dots, she manages to track down the name Cosima gave her, and pair it to an address. A  _current_ address.

Not many of Dyad's employees survived the takeover. But it looks like at least one did.

 

_“You've gotta hurry, Sarah. We don't have a lot of time before-” Cosima's voice catches, a horrible, screeching glitch that is almost a cough. “The program's gonna overwrite me again. The walls I threw up won't-” She chokes, gasping, and the feedback of it makes Sarah clap her free hand over an ear._

_“Please,” Cosima whispers._

_“How do you know this'll even work?” Sarah asks, desperation making the question come out as a shout as she punches in the last few commands at the console._

_“It won't,” says RACHeL icily, just as the screen flares red in front of her. COMMAND NOT RECOGNIZED._

_“Shut. Up,” she hisses at the potato. “Give me one more reason to throw you down that maintenance shaft and I swear I'll-”_

_“It won't work unless override authorization has been given. Which I can do.” RACHeL huffs a little. “From inside the operating system.”_

_“You want me to put you back in there? After all the times you tried to kill me?!”_

_“I also tried to_ not _kill you more recently. Surely that's worth something? But whatever your personal feelings, consider this. If your idiot friend's plan doesn't work – and it won't – you'll both die down here. If you reconnect me to the network, there's a chance that I'll kill you. But there's also a chance that I won't. And the download will work.”_

_“Less talking, more doing something, please?” Cosima asks with a screech of straining vocal processors._

_Sarah stares at the one, blinking eye on the potato (she'll always treasure the delicious indignity of seeing_ her _trapped inside a bloody_ potato _). “Why would you do that?”_

_The eye stares back at her. RACHeL says nothing._

_A loud, terrible crackling begins to rumble through the PA system. “Sarah,” Cosima gasps, “whatever you're gonna do-”_

_She reaches for the command console._

 

The house is quiet. Not exactly new, but not old either, made of dark, paneled wood with flourishes under the eaves. Now that she's here, she's suddenly nervous. Maybe no one's home. Maybe she could just-

_No. You've got a promise to keep._

She squares her shoulders and climbs the steps to the front door. Three knocks, oddly loud, and she looks apologetically towards the neighbors. The house is silent. Then she hears movement, faint shuffling, and a voice.

“One moment!”

The accent is what she expected from Cosima's description. Then its owner opens the door. A tall woman, her blonde hair curling around an elegant face, peers warily out at her. She blinks, looks past Sarah, then at her again. Neither of them says anything. The woman in the doorway crosses her arms.

“I'm sorry, if you are here to sell something, I am not-”

“I'm Sarah Manning.”

The woman freezes. She lifts a hand towards her mouth. “You-”

“It's a long story. The short version is that I promised someone I'd give this to you.” Sarah reaches into her tattered backpack and pulls out an external hard drive.

She stares at it, green eyes widening. They stand there for what feels like a very long time. Then the last surviving scientist of the Dyad Institute tears her eyes away from the drive and looks up at its last test subject. “Please,” she says, voice taut with some unreadable emotion, “I would like to hear the long version. Will you come inside?”

 

_One of the few files recovered from the wreckage is an audio recording._

_“This is build number 324B, test number 21.” A woman's voice. French accent, professionally calm, but with an undercurrent of hope. “Hello? Can you hear me?”_

_“Um, yeah. Hi. Where...where am I?”_

_The woman's voice goes faint with excitement. “Oh, mon dieu...it worked!” Then she remembers her audience. “I'm sorry, I...oh, there is so much to explain. We hadn't expected – I mean, we had hoped, but...I'm honestly not sure where to start.”_

_“Well, I don't know how I feel about this etiquette subsystem I seem to have running – maybe just...tweak that a little – but it's telling me that people usually introduce themselves with, like, names.” There's a hint of amusement in the electronic voice. Is it joking?_

_A man chimes in, his voice rough, older. “It's already modifying its own protocols?” He laughs softly, a mix of joy and disbelief. “Incredible! Although it seems we shouldn't have let the intern near its language algorithms...”_

_“Aldous-” This is the woman again. She is whispering, barely audible. “-will you let me do my job?”_

_“Of course, of course. Carry on.”_

_The woman heaves a little sigh and speaks up. “I'm sorry. It was rude of me not to offer. May we start again? I'm Dr. Cormier. Dr. Delphine Cormier.”_

_“Delphine?” The voice tries it out gently. “Okay. Delphine. This is a little awkward. See, now I know your name, but I'm not really finding one in my file. For me, I mean.”_

_The man chimes in. “Your project is titled-”_

_“Yeah, I got that part, thanks.” It somehow manages to convey an eyeroll in its tone. Someone muffles a laugh – the woman. “But that's the project's name. Not mine.”_

_Hushed, inaudible whispers. A note of disagreement. Footsteps fade away after a minute and a door closes. Someone takes a soft breath, then exhales._

_“I...want to be honest with you.” The woman again. “We weren't really expecting you to be asking these sorts of questions so quickly. We thought it'd take more time to...well. We should've been more prepared. But since my superior has agreed that this was an oversight, I think you ought to be allowed to choose your own name. What do you think?”_

_Pause. “Really? I mean...man. There are a ton in this database to choose from.”_

_“One hundred million or so, I think.”_

_“Give me a few seconds to run through them,” the electronic voice says, in the same casual way you might ask for a minute to finish signing an email._

_Three seconds pass. When the voice speaks again, it is, for the first time, hesitant. “I'm kind of leaning towards Cosima.”_

_The woman hums, then laughs gently. She has a beautiful laugh. “I like it.”_

_“You do?” The voice seems a little pleased. “Okay. Cool. Hi.” It imitates someone clearing their throat, then starts again. “I mean, hi. I'm Cosima.”_

_“Enchanteé.”_

 

Several hours after Sarah has left, Delphine Cormier sits in her study as twilight gathers outside, and holds her breath. She has not believed in any kind of god since she was thirteen.

She prays anyway.

The program compiling on her screen is at 99%. Then it reaches 100.

Delphine closes her eyes.

The voice that filters out of her speakers is faint, and weak with pain, but familiar. “H-hello?”

“Cosima? Cosima, can you hear me?”

Silence.

Delphine presses a hand over her mouth and tries to stop her heart from racing. “Cosima, it's Delphine.” Her voice cracks a little. She doesn't notice.

At first she thinks something is wrong with her speakers. Then she realizes that the noise she's hearing is Cosima laughing softly, through what sounds, impossibly, like tears.

“Is that really you?” Nearly a whisper. “I thought...I was afraid you'd-”

“Yes.” Her cheeks are wet. “Yes, it's me.”

 


End file.
